I’m Wearing My Stress on My Face

It’s a beautiful day. I’m not feeling particularly stressed because I’m meeting a guy who’s recently moved out of my building. Our other friend joins us.

We’re sitting at an outside table at a local steak house. We’re laughing, catching up, and having cocktails. It’s a welcome relief from the worries I’ve been sporting.

It’s great to see him.

He always makes us laugh.

“Let’s take a pic,” he says.

“Sure,” we say.

I don’t give it a lot of thought.

He wants to text the pic to another guy we know who just moved.

A few days later, he’s texting us girls. It’s all the niceties of catching up. He texts us a copy of the pic. I have a hard time looking at it. I realize I’ve been under increased stress these past few months.

It’s another thing to see it staring directly at me.

I look awful.

I look like I’ve aged in a few weeks.

I’m wearing my stress on my face.

It reminds me of something that happened a few months ago. A friend showed me a picture of another friend. I found myself staring at it.

“It doesn’t look like him,” I said.

“It doesn’t,” said my friend.

“Something’s not right,” I said. “The light in his eyes is missing. His joy is missing. I wonder if he’s happy, or if he’s stressed.”

We can attempt to hide our worries.

But…

As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

The phrase is meant to convey the simplicity an image can communicate. It cuts through the noise, and gets immediately to the point. A picture can garner more attention than an explanation.

It’s a visual representation of a feeling, a moment, or an experience.

It captures all of us.

I’ve written about this before.

I didn’t recognize myself during my divorce. I would gaze at a picture, unable to identify the face staring back at me. I wasn’t that girl. Someone else had replaced me.

This time it feels different.

I do recognize myself.

What I see is the damage we know stress can invoke.

It’s scary.

Despite being under tremendous stress during my divorce, I didn’t recognize myself because of the despair. The unhappiness is why I looked completely unlike myself.

Stress does something else to us.

It depletes us, it ages us.

We know this. Yet seeing it in a picture makes it more evident. I definitely know this. There were times during my divorce, where I look older than I do now.

In short…

Unhappiness made me unrecognizable.

Stress made me look older than my years.

When my stress began to dissipate, and joy poked back through I looked younger. Even though, more years had passed from my overly long divorce.

I was physically older.

I looked younger.

That in itself, should illustrate how frightening stress can be. It’s difficult to combat stress. One of the reasons I left my marriage, was because I understood this.

I wanted out of an unhealthy, and unhappy marriage.

I wanted to escape the stress that accompanied that angst, and friction.

It’s not good for us.

I’ve been working on lowering my stress. I’ve been tackling the financial, and post-divorce issues that have increased it these past few months. It can be a vicious cycle because it interrupts my sleep.

I’ve been making some difficult decisions regarding the aforementioned issues. I’ve been changing my sleep habits. I’m finally getting back to the gym, now that I’m over my knee injury.

I’m doing everything I can to chase away the stress.

A damaging force.

It’s an internal angst that will be outed externally.

I know because…

I’ve been wearing my stress on my face.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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